Wednesday, May 17, 2006

The Madman of Chiswick: A Cautionary Tale About Inbreeding

Posh as you like, he was. Proper posh. Unintelligible on the phone. Said 'ears' instead of 'yes'. That kind of thing. Quite funny though, in a way. Lived in Chiswick and worked in the City (quel surprise). And from his photograph, quite astonishingly handsome.

I met him one evening in a pub. In Chiswick. A few emails had been exchanged. Nothing remarkable, really. So seeing him in the flesh was quite a shock because he was, as his photographs suggested, quite astonishingly handsome. Odd, though. Talked about himself a lot. We drank some wine and talked about something. Can't remember what. And he said, come back to my flat for a cup of tea and order a cab. Nothing untoward, you understand. Plus there was obviously nothing 'like that' going on.

And my word, the flat. The top of an enormous house. Full of beautiful paintings and furniture in that over-crowded posh person's way. We drank tea and he showed me some photographs of his father winning the Monte Carlo Grand Prix. By now, it was clear that he wasn't quite right. Lots of stories about slights real and imagined; slightly cruel stories about things he had done to women who had slighted him on the line. I was fascinated, rather than afraid.

We sat down. "May I read you some of my poetry? Seamus Heaney was a family friend and he thought some of it was rather good". "Gosh", I said, "best not, I have the most appalling habit of giggling when anyone reads poetry out loud, however good it is, and I'm afraid you'll be very offended."

He started reading his poetry. His poetry was not good. It was about death and moles and stuff. To read it, he assumed an over-dramatic and v-e-r-y s-l-o-w voice; the voice of someone doing a very bad impersonation of Lawrence Olivier c. 1949. I was biting my hand. "And now - some music", he said, leaping to his feet.

He turned on his "soundsystem" and out came Alannis Morisette. He started swaying. "When I was in the hospital they recommended that I get a very good soundsystem. If you're bipolar, like I am, you often have very sensitive hearing. This cost £10,000". "Oh", I said. The cab came. "I don't think we'll be lovers, but it would be rarely good fun to have you round to supper with some chums one night", he said. "Lovely", I said, and disappeared into the West London evening.

The next day, he phoned me. And the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that. I started ignoring his calls. He started leaving increasingly strange messages. He emailed me (and 30 of his friends) a picture of a woman's breasts. "This bitch strung me along, and now I'm getting back at her by sending you all the photograph she sent me". I replied saying: never send me anything like this again. You have been very unkind, and you should apologise to her. He replied saying I was right, and that he had apologised.

One day, he emailed me again asking me to write to the management of the site we had met each other on, asking for a character reference because he had been banned from the site for 'abusing other members'. I said I wouldn't get involved, and didn't know him well enough to give him a character reference.

And the reply was interesting. " IF YOU DO NOT REPLY TO MY EMAILS I SHALL BLOCK YOU FROM ALL MY EMAIL ACCOUNTS AND I WILL NEVER SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN."